This is not about me!

What is regret?

I’m trying to figure out the ‘exact’ meaning of regret. If you had feelings of regret and they were somehow expunged, what would you feel instead?

Google says it is a “complex and painful emotion” that stems from imagining a different outcome of past action — or inaction.

Part of the internet divides regret into feelings that stem from actions not taken, versus feelings that stem from actions that were wrong and the doer is now unhappy about them. There are quite a few quotes for either side of this debate. Marilyn Monroe supposedly said to regret nothing. Her argument was that once upon a time, that was exactly what you had wanted.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 — 1892), an American poet wrote — “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’” Kurt Vonnegut supposedly said this also but I knew it had a much earlier source.

I found a list.

If only I’d been more prudent …
If only I had taken the risk …
If only I’d done the right thing …
If only I had reached out to ….

This list of types of regret was actually very clarifying. IF ONLY… In the Narnia stories by C. S. Lewis, Aslan, the lion, speaks many times about the fact that no one knows “what would have happened” and therefore it is a foolish and useless question. The point comes up in Prince Caspian when Lucy finds Aslan in the middle of the night after a fruitless day trying to find the actual Prince Caspian. He says point blank, no one knows what might have happened, but anyone can find out what will happen now by taking action now. (The other Narnia example that I can think of, off the top of my head, comes in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Lucy magically eavesdrops on her classmates and hears things she doesn’t like.)

This might solve the question I am asking myself in the story that I am writing. If the protagonist is seized by deep regret is this good or bad? (I do think it is very human.) If her regret is magically removed, what will she then think or feel? Or do?

Here is another commentary on regret.

Mezzo Cammin by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Half of my life is gone, and I have let
   The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
   The aspiration of my youth, to build
   Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
   Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
   But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
   Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
   Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
   A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
   And hear above me on the autumnal blast
   The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.